As we pass the halfway point on what I will assume will be the first cour of Anno’s Gundam GQuuuuuux, as much as I enjoy alternate-reality takes on existing Gundam lore, I am not really finding myself enjoying much else of this show. Oh, there are lots of little bits and bobs here and there that are good, such as the Black Tri-Stars in episode five, or Kycilia Zabi coming onto the stage perhaps next week. But among the three principle characters, Machu, Shuji, and Nyan, I am really having trouble precisely wanting to give a shit about what happens to them.
Instead, I am mad online that they gave us this one-shot character, and killed her!
Indeed, probably the only interesting episode of this first cour so far was this one-off Clan Battle between Machu and Shuji and Shiiko Sugai, a “witch” who was a Feddie pilot with over a hundred kills from the One Year War. At first glance, it really felt like it was going to be hair-dyed Fraw Bow, and I thought it would have been kinda cool if instead of Amuro, she wound up becoming a top Feddie pilot in the war and survived, only to go and get herself got out of revenge. But this character is as far as I can tell unconnected to anyone prior, just someone they created for the express purpose of recreating some iconic RX-78 fight scenes with, including the infamous beam saber stab.
Past that, we’re getting into some weird fanservice-y, Annoservice-y territory of Evangelion-ish matters where as we explore whatever alternate UC this will take us, we also have to explore this strange throuple that has emerged between Shuji, Machu, and Nyan. Frankly, I don’t for Shuji at all, and am failing to understand how the hell he came upon the RX-78, and where the hell is Char? It’s just this cycle of I’M A STARVING ARTIST UGUU~ THE GUNDAM SAYS~ that I am failing to understand where to go with it. Now you have Nyan out there able to interface with the psycommu, is apparently a Newtype also, and is batshit crazy.
I think what makes this show a little slower and disjointed for me is that by now in my Gundam series, either in the first third of a 50-episode series, or the first cour of the more modern series, the main characters usually get a flagship, or base of operations, and they start to flesh themselves with more clear-cut motivations. Halfway in, we still don’t know who the fuck Shuji is, Machu just wants to go to Earth, and Nyan just exists. Even our pseudo-antagonists, Challa Bull and the crew of Green Base, are just kind of in a holding pattern seemingly fine with their Gundam being used in Clan Battles, while trying to decide if they’re going to pull a Rau Le Cruset and toast the place. I feel like we had substantially more progress in The Witch From Mercury with Suletta having more character development than these three, and still bumbling about it.
And therein lies the rub; Machu is upset the girl who broke her phone and set her down this path of crime is newtyping it with the homeless guy who talks in the third-Gundam, but the girl is… just some Aladdin-esque Ramona Flowers knock-off just trying to get high on space? There just isn’t much out there for me to want to give a shit. Maybe that’s why all we can do is stare at Shiiko memes, R34, and make Kira Yamato jokes.
It just feels like at the end of the day, Anno and Co. had this really neat idea to explore a Back to the Future plot that suggested “Well what if Gene didn’t fuck everything up and Char stole the Gundam?” and that’s been cool up until they had to then invent a storyline to frontload it. That is what has gotten weird, and boy howdy I am trying to remain positive, but we’re sliding dangerously into AGE territory here. You do not want to go Full AGE.
It really does feel like GQuuuuuux is just the Gundam SEED Freedom Zero waiting room.
